2010-09-23

Debugging a non-existent bug

I visited one of my clients last week, to find a tester of one of their products waiting with a critical bug report. The product homepage was giving rise to a warning `This site is potentially harmful to your computer. ...' I tried, and did not receive such a message. He walked away perplexed.

Five minutes later, he called saying that this `bug' was reproducible, but only in his machine. I asked him which browser he was using. ``IE 6," he responded. I asked him to check using Firefox, and report back.

He called right back. His voice sounded even more perplexed. ``Not reproducible using Firefox, sir," he said feebly.

``Yes, there is a bug," I retorted, ``not in your product, but in your browser!"